Locale ('Ndrangheta)

A locale (translated as "local" or "place"), is the main local organizational unit of the 'Ndrangheta with jurisdiction over criminal activities in an entire town or an area in a large urban center.[1][2]

A locale is usually made up by one 'ndrina (in the case of a small town) or several 'ndrine, if more than one 'ndrina operates in the same town. In the case of larger cities a local may rule over a certain area or neighbourhood of the city.[2] In some contexts a 'ndrina is more powerful than the locale on which they formally depend.[1]

Each locale has a boss with authority over members' life and death, a capo locale, usually the capobastone of a 'ndrina.[2] It has at least 49 members and besides the capo locale, there is the contabile (accountant) who handles the finances - commonly called la bacinella or la valigetta (briefcase) - and a crimine that oversees the illegal activity. All three form a triumvirate called the Copiata.[3] A locale is often subdivided into two divisions: the società minore (the "minor" or lower society) and the società maggiore ("major" or higher society). The minor is submissive to the major.[2][4]

The locale of San Luca has a historical preeminence. Every new group or locale must obtain its authorization to operate and every group belonging to the 'Ndrangheta "still has to deposit a small percentage of illicit proceeds to the principale of San Luca in recognition of the latter's primordial supremacy."[1]

1.
Triumvirate
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A triumvirate is a political regime ruled or dominated by three powerful individuals known as triumvirs. The arrangement can be formal or informal, though the three are notionally equal, this is rarely the case in reality. The term can also be used to describe a state with three different military leaders who all claim to be the sole leader, in the context of the Soviet Union and Russia, the term troika is used for triumvirate. Originally, triumviri were special commissions of three men appointed for specific administrative tasks apart from the duties of Roman magistrates. The capitales were first established around 290–287 BCE and they were supervised by the praetor urbanus. These triumviri, or the tresviri nocturni, may also have some responsibility for fire control. The triumviri or tresviri aere argento auro flando feriundo supervised the issuing of Roman coins, three-man commissions were also appointed for purposes such as establishing colonies or distributing land. Triumviri mensarii served as bankers, the full range of their financial functions in 216 BCE. Another form of commission was the tresviri epulones, who were in charge of organizing public feasts on holidays. This commission was created in 196 BCE by a law on behalf of the people. The arrangement had no status, and its purpose was to consolidate the political power of the three and their supporters against the senatorial elite. After the death of Crassus in 53 BCE, the two fought a civil war, during which Pompey was killed and Caesar established his sole rule as perpetual dictator. The Second Triumvirate was recognized as a triumvirate at the time, a Lex Titia formalized the rule of Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. The legal language makes reference to the traditional tresviri, although the constitutional machinery of the Republic was not irrevocably dismantled by the Lex Titia, in the event it never recovered. Lepidus was sidelined early in the triumvirate, and Antony was eliminated in civil war, in various municipalities under the Principate, the chief magistracy was a college of three, styled triumviri. In the Bible triumvirates occurred at some events in both the Old Testament and New Testament. In the Book of Exodus Moses, his brother Aaron and, according to some views their nephew or brother-in-law, Hur acted this way during Battle of Rephidim against the Amalekites. In the Gospels as a leading trio among the Twelve apostles at three occasions during public ministry of Jesus acted Peter, James, son of Zebedee

2.
Feud
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Feuds begin because one party perceives itself to have been attacked, insulted or wronged by another. Intense feelings of resentment trigger the initial retribution, which causes the party to feel equally aggrieved. The dispute is subsequently fuelled by a cycle of retaliatory violence. This continual cycle of provocation and retaliation makes it difficult to end the feud peacefully. Feuds frequently involve the original family members and/or associates, can last for generations. They can be interpreted as an outgrowth of social relations based in family honor. Until the early period, feuds were considered legitimate legal instruments and were regulated to some degree. For example, Serb culture calls this krvna osveta, meaning blood revenge, in the English-speaking world, vendetta is sometimes extended to mean any other long-standing feud, not necessarily involving bloodshed. Sometimes, it is not mutual, but rather refers to a series of hostile acts waged by one person against another without reciprocation. Blood feuds were common in societies with a rule of law. An entire family is considered responsible for any one of them has done. Sometimes two separate branches of the family have even come to blows, or worse, over some dispute. The practice has mostly disappeared with more centralized societies where law enforcement, in Homeric ancient Greece, the practice of personal vengeance against wrongdoers was considered natural and customary, Embedded in the Greek morality of retaliation is the right of vengeance. Feud is a war, just as war is a series of revenges. In the ancient Hebraic context, it was considered the duty of the individual, the executor of the law of blood-revenge who personally put the initial killer to death was given a special designation, goel haddam, the blood-avenger or blood-redeemer. Six Cities of Refuge were established to provide protection and due process for any unintentional manslayers, the avenger was forbidden from harming the unintentional killer if the killer took refuge in one of these cities. According to historian Marc Bloch, The Middle Ages, from beginning to end, the onus, of course, lay above all on the wronged individual, vengeance was imposed on him as the most sacred of duties. The solitary individual, however, could do but little, moreover, it was most commonly a death that had to be avenged

3.
Antimafia Commission
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The Italian parliamentary Antimafia Commission is a bicameral commission of the Italian Parliament, composed of members from the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The first commission, formed in 1963, was established as a body of inquiry tasked with investigating the phenomenon of the Mafia and those who provide testimony to the Commission are obliged by law to tell the truth. The Commission can also submit reports to the Parliament as often as desired, the attack was attributed to the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano. Nevertheless, the Mafia was suspected of involvement in the Portella della Ginestra massacre and many other previous, however, the proposal was turned down by the Minister of the Interior, Mario Scelba, amidst indignant voices about prejudice against Sicily and Sicilians. Ten years later, in 1958, senator Ferruccio Parri again proposed to form a Commission, however, in March 1962, amidst gang wars in Palermo, the Sicilian Assembly asked for an official inquiry. On April 11,1962, the Senate in Rome approved the bill and it was finally approved it on December 20,1962. It took a time to form because newspapers and parliamentarians alike were opposed to the inclusion of Sicilians. It lasted less than three months before the elections of April 28,1963. The second president in the new legislature was the Christian Democrat Donato Pafundi, and was formed on June 5,1963. Later that month, on June 30,1963, a car exploded in Ciaculli. The bomb was intended for Salvatore Ciaschiteddu Greco, head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission, the Ciaculli massacre changed the Mafia war into a war against the Mafia. It prompted the first concerted efforts by the state in post-war Italy. On July 6,1963 the Antimafia Commission met for the first time and it would take 13 years and two more legislatures before a final report was submitted in 1976. Matta’s arrival in 1972 created a scandal, he had mentioned in a report and was summoned to testify in the previous legislature about the role of the Mafia in real estate speculation. The PCI called for his resignation, and in the end the whole Commission under the presidency of Luigi Carraro had to resign, the law extended 1956 legislation concerning individuals considered to be ‘socially dangerous’ to those ‘suspected of belonging to associations of the Mafia type’. The law gave powers to a prosecutor or questor to identify. However, the efficacy of the new law was severely limited, firstly, because there was no legal definition of a Mafia association. Secondly, because the obligation for mafiosi to reside in areas outside Sicily, actually opened up new opportunities to develop activities in the cities of northern

4.
'Ndrangheta
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The Ndràngheta is organized crime centered in Calabria, Italy. A US diplomat estimated that the narcotics trafficking, extortion. Since the 1950s, the organization has spread towards Northern Italy, according to a 2013 Threat Assessment on Italian Organised Crime of Europol, the Ndrangheta is among the richest and most powerful organised crime groups at a global level. In 1861 the prefect of Reggio Calabria already noticed the presence of so-called camorristi, since the 1880s, there is ample evidence of Ndrangheta-type groups in police reports and sentences by local courts. At the time they were often being referred to as the picciotteria, onorata società or camorra, an 1897 sentence from the court in Palmi mentioned a written code of rules found in the village of Seminara based on honour, secrecy, violence, solidarity and mutual assistance. In the folk culture surrounding Ndrangheta in Calabria, references to the Spanish Garduña often appear, aside from these references, however, there is nothing to substantiate a link between the two organizations. In many areas of Calabria the verb ndranghitiari, from the Greek verb andragathízesthai, the first time the word Ndrangheta was mentioned before a wider audience was by the Calabrian writer Corrado Alvaro in the Corriere della Sera in September 1955. Until 1975, the Ndrangheta restricted their Italian operations to Calabria, mainly involved in extortion and their involvement in cigarette contraband expanded their scope and contacts with the Sicilian Mafia and the neapolitan Camorra. With the arrival of public works in Calabria, skimming off public contracts became an important source of income. Disagreements over how to distribute the spoils led to the First Ndrangheta war killing 233 people, the prevailing factions began to kidnap rich people from northern Italy for ransom. It is believed that John Paul Getty III, kidnapped for ransom in 1973, was one of their victims, the Second Ndrangheta war raged from 1985 to 1991. The bloody six-year war between the Condello-Imerti-Serraino-Rosmini clans and the De Stefano-Tegano-Libri-Latella clans led to more than 600 deaths, the Sicilian Mafia contributed to the end of the conflict and probably suggested the subsequent set up of a superordinate body, called La Provincia, to avoid further infighting. In the 1990s, the organization started to invest in the international drug trade. Deputy President of the parliament of Calabria Francesco Fortugno was killed by the Ndrangheta on 16 October 2005 in Locri. Demonstrations against the organization then ensued, with young protesters carrying banderoles reading Ammazzateci tutti, the national government started a large-scale enforcement operation in Calabria and arrested numerous ndranghetisti including the murderers of Fortugno. The Ndrangheta has recently expanded its activities to Northern Italy, mainly to sell drugs, in May 2007 twenty members of Ndrangheta were arrested in Milan. On 30 August 2007, hundreds of police raided the town of San Luca, over 30 men and women, linked to the killing of six Italian men in Germany, were arrested. On 9 October 2012, following a long investigation by the central government the City Council of Reggio Calabria headed by Mayor Demetrio Arena was dissolved for alleged ties to the group

5.
Piromalli 'ndrina
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The Piromalli ndrina is one of the most powerful clans of the Ndrangheta, a criminal and mafia-type organisation in Calabria, Italy. The ndrina is based in Gioia Tauro on the Tyrrhenian coast, the Piromallis are allied with their relatives of the Molè family, also from Gioia Tauro. Often they are referred to as the Piromalli-Molè clan, the Piromalli clan contains more than 200 members. The Piromalli-Molé clan was involved in a feud with the Ventre-Carlino clan in the 1950s, in which Antonino Piromalli. The clan rose to prominence under the rule of the brothers Mommo Piromalli and their senior position was recognized by all other family chiefs and their advice was in most cases followed without protest. When Girolamo Piromalli died of causes in 1979, his brother succeeded him as head of the clan. Since the mid-1970s, according to several pentiti, members of the Piromalli family, in Gioia Tauro, blood relatives of the Piromalli long represented the interest of the clan in the city council. Peppe Piromalli was captured on February 24,1984, at age 83, he died on February 19,2005 and his nephew Giuseppe Piromalli succeeded him. Giuseppe was a fugitive since 1993 and included in the list of most wanted fugitives in Italy until his capture in March 1999, while in the strict Article 41-bis prison regime he nevertheless keeps on conducting his business and direct the clan outside. The Piromalli clan tried to relax the strict regime for their boss, one of the plots was to deliver votes to Berlusconi’s People of Freedom coalition during the election campaign in 2008 in return for a relaxation of Piromalli’s prison stature. Micciché asked two leading members of the Piromalli clan to visit Marcello DellUtri – Berlusconis right-hand man – at his Milan office. The subcontracts for the steelwork in Gioia Tauro, whose value reached the astronomic amount of US$3.8 billion were largely distributed on the basis of territorial criteria. More than half the contracts were granted to the Piromalli family, the Ndrangheta exploited the construction of the steelworks until the project was abandoned when the government decided there was no economic base for it. In 1977 disagreements about business interests emerged between Piromalli and the De Stefano clan, a hit squad headed by Peppe Piromalli killed the clans boss Giorgio De Stefano. Some 1,000 people were killed in clan wars over the construction contracts, the Piromalli clan managed to condition the management of the new container terminal in the port of Gioia Tauro. Additionally, the Piromalli’s desired contracts, subcontracts, and jobs in the two firms that run the port, as well as other companies in the surrounding area. Despite subscribing to an anti corruption pact with the government, the managers of both Contship and Medcenter gave in to the demands, “It effectively eliminated legitimate competition from companies not influenced or controlled by the mafia in providing goods and services, performing construction work and hiring personnel. And it threw a shadow over the behaviour of government and other public bodies. ”The Piromalli’s were allied with their relatives of the Molè family

6.
San Luca
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San Luca is a comune in the Province of Reggio Calabria in the Italian region Calabria, located about 100 kilometres southwest of Catanzaro and about 35 kilometres east of Reggio Calabria. The town is situated on the slopes of the Aspromonte mountain, in the valley of the Bonamico river. At about 10 kilometres from San Luca up the lies the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Polsi. The Italian author Corrado Alvaro was born in San Luca in 1895 and his hand-written notes and other personal belongings are now kept in the house where he was born by the Corrado Alvaro Foundation. San Luca was founded on October 18,1592, by the Prince Sigismund Loffredo and named after the saint of that day, Luke the Evangelist. It was populated by refugees from the old town of Potamia, San Luca became a comune in 1811, and was hit by floods and landslides in 1951,1953 and December 1972. Around 1900, at the time the young Corrado Alvaro grew up in San Luca, illiteracy was near 100 percent, the women went to fetch water with the casks on their heads at a well nearby. The town was pretty much isolated, there was no road to the coast, many inhabitants joined the Italian diaspora to escape the extreme poverty. San Luca is considered to be the stronghold of the Ndrangheta, at least since the 1950s, the chiefs of the Ndrangheta locali have met regularly near the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Polsi during the September Feast. In 1969 the police raided a meeting near the sanctuary and captured more than 70 ndranghetisti, San Luca, in the words of a study published in 2005 by Italys domestic intelligence service, is the cradle of and its epicentre. Corrado Alvaro, journalist and writer Antonio Pelle, also known as Ntoni Gambazza, a historically significant Ndrangheta boss Antonio Nirta, mafia Brotherhoods, Organized Crime, Italian Style. All In The Famiglia, Cracking omertà in Calabria, by Bruce Livesey, The Walrus Magazine, May 2008

7.
De Stefano 'ndrina
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The De Stefano ndrina is one of the most powerful clans of the Ndrangheta, a criminal and mafia-type organisation in Calabria, Italy. The ndrina hailed from the Archi neighbourhood in Reggio Calabria, several of its members were included in the list of most wanted fugitives in Italy. Within two years moved from being simple Ndranghetisti to being the new lords of Reggio Calabria. Before that time the clan had not been prominent, according to the pentito Giacomo Lauro. In 1970 … the De Stefanos … were nobody, they were nobody, the De Stefano brothers became the owners of Reggio Calabria after the war, the first mafia war. … I do not want to swear, but who the fuck were the De Stefanos in the 1970s and they had killed a certain Sergi for four oxen, for a fraud of four oxen in Modena … These were the De Stefanos. They committed petty fraud for four cows, … then with cigarettes, through the membership of covert Masonic lodges the Ndrangheta bosses were able to contact law enforcement authorities, judges and politicians that were necessary to access to public work contracts. The De Stefanos, however, were modern and the differences led to conflicts. They also robbed a shipment of smuggled tobacco belonging to Tripodo and these innovations and the institution of La Santa were opposed by the more traditionalist chiefs like Tripodo and Antonio Macrì. The war started with an attack on the brothers Giorgio, Paolo, Giovanni was killed while the eldest of the brothers – and the boss of the clan – Giorgio was wounded. Tripodo was arrested in February 1975 and incarcerated in the Poggioreale prison in Naples and he was killed with the help of Camorra boss Raffaele Cutolo, the boss of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata who worked with the De Stefano’s in drug trafficking. They also supported prince Junio Valerio Borghese and his plans for a neo-fascist coup, the so-called Golpe Borghese fizzled out in the night of December 8,1970, however. The De Stefanos entered in a Masonic lodge in order to take care of business. They were also close to Lodovico Ligato, a Christian Democrat politician from Reggio Calabria and he was killed by rival Ndrangheta groups in August 1989 in a dispute about bribes over public contracts. The Ndrangheta exploited the construction of the steelworks until the project was abandoned when the government decided there was no base for it. In 1977 disagreements about business interests emerged between Piromalli and the De Stefano clan, a hit squad headed by Giuseppe Peppe Piromalli killed Giorgio De Stefano. Some 1,000 people were killed in clan wars over the construction contracts, Paolo took over the leadership of the clan. In the 1980s, the De Stefano brothers controlled virtually the entire wholesale meat market of Reggio Calabria and they forced butchers and supermarkets, through intimidation and threats, to buy meat from their companies

8.
Toxic waste dumping by the 'Ndrangheta
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The Ndrangheta, a criminal organization from Calabria has been involved in radioactive waste dumping since the 1980s. Ships with toxic and radioactive waste were sunk off the Italian coast, in addition, vessels were allegedly sent to Somalia and other developing countries with toxic waste, including radioactive waste cargoes, which were either sunk with the ship or buried on land. The introduction of more environmental legislation in the 1980s made illegal waste dumping a lucrative business for organized crime groups in Italy. Its conclusions noted interferences and threats against investigators, and were critical of ENEA, Italys state energy research agency, in 2005, Fonti revealed the conspiracy in the news magazine Lespresso. His statements led to investigations into the radioactive waste disposal rackets, involving Giorgio Comerio and his disposal company. Over two decades, Italian prosecutors have looked more than 30 suspicious deep-water sinkings. They suspect that Italian and foreign industrialists have acted in league with the Ndrangheta, vessels that sank in fair weather had suspicious cargo, sent no mayday or the crew vanished. Former employees of ENEA are suspected of paying the criminals to take waste off their hands in the 1980s and 1990s and he said Ndrangheta received £100,000 for the job. Fonti had been put on the job by his boss Sebastiano Romeo of the Ndrangheta clan from San Luca in collaboration with Giuseppe Giorgi, another Ndrangheta boss involved was Natale Iamonte who sank ships near Melito di Porto Salvo. However, the vessel they surveyed off Cetraro in deep waters off the coast of Calabria turned out to be a passenger steamship sunk by a German submarine in 1917, legambiente alleges that local rebel groups were given weapons in exchange for receiving the waste ships. Fonti claims that Italian TV journalist Ilaria Alpi and her cameraman Miran Hrovatin were murdered in 1994 in Somalia because they had seen toxic waste arrive in Bosaso, Somalia. Fonti also claimed that Socialist politicians Gianni De Michelis and Bettino Craxi intervened to ensure that Italian peacekeeping troops in Somalia turned an eye to the transports. The huge waves which battered northern Somalia after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami were initially believed to have stirred up illegally dumped toxic, there are also heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury. However, a United Nations technical fact-finding mission in 2005 did not find any traces of toxic waste along the shorelines after the tsunami, a source with the United Nations Development Programme described the search for hazardous material in Somalia as like looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s not that they don’t know it’s there, but that they don’t know where to start looking for it

9.
San Luca feud
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The two involved clans, the Strangio-Nirta and Pelle-Vottari-Romeo families, both belong to the Ndrangheta crime organization. After a fight at a celebration in 1991 turned ugly. In May 1993, four people were killed in an hour, shortly thereafter, the old patriarch Antonio Nirta imposed a peace with the help of the De Stefano clan from Reggio Calabria, which held for some time. A truce was called in 2000, the feud resumed after an honour killing on January 5,2005. Domenico Giorgi of the Nirta-Strangio clan killed Salvatore Favasuli a relative of the Pelle-Vottari clan, Giorgi fled to Piedmont, but the family of Favasuli killed his brother Antonio Giorgi. The Nirta-Strangio clan reacted by shooting Francesco Pelle, Ciccio Pakistan, a bullet entered his back and he remained paralyzed. At the funeral of Maria Strangio, her cousin Giovanni Strangio appeared with gun and he was arrested and released in July 2007. Until August 2007, five murders and eight attempted murders in Calabria were attributed to the feud. During the reconstruction of Christmas at the trial in 2011 the prosecution said that there was a state of war between the two clans, among the perpetrators of the crime, was Sebastiano Vottari, a brother of Franco. One of the men, Marco Marmo, was seen as responsible for the murder of Maria Strangio. It is believed that the men had moved to Germany to escape the feud, Giovanni Strangio was identified as one of the two gunmen who fired more than 70 shots. The second gunman is believed to be Strangio’s brother-in-law Giuseppe Nirta, in Germany the massacre instigated the Mafia. Movement, inspired by the example of the anti-Mafia movement Addiopizzo in Sicily, a massacre of this size had been unprecedented in the history of the Ndrangheta. Italian police drastically heightened security measures in San Luca as a result, nirtas rival Francesco Vottari was arrested on October 12,2007. German and Italian police cooperated, and four members of the Strangio-Nirta clan were arrested in December 2007, the head of the Strangio-Nirta clan, Giuseppe Nirta was arrested on May 23,2008. His son and successor Paolo Nirta on August 7,2008, according to prosecutor Nicola Gratteri the elite bosses of the Ndrangheta imposed a peace directly after the Duisburg massacre. On February 11,2010, police arrested Sebastiano Nirta in San Luca suspected of being Strangios accomplices in the Duisburg killings, the jailed Giuseppe Nirta received an additional arrest warrant. Both were charged on the basis of DNA evidence recovered from the crime scene, the trial against the killers started on April 14,2010, in Locri